Children of Doubt

"I saw you from out in the water," he said. "Wanted you as soon as I could get to you. There's a beach equipment vendor's shack over there. I manage the concession here and there's a lock inside the door."

"I have a better idea," I said. "I have a separate room for us. Room 428. There's an extra key card to the room in my bag here. I'm staying a week."

The first thing Billy wanted to do when he joined me in room 428 was to take a shower to get the beach sand and smell off him. The second thing he wanted to do when I had stripped, climbed into the shower, and started soaping his back, was to pull me around in front of him, lift me, settle me on his shaft, and fuck me up against the soapy tiles of the shower's back wall.

It was as always. He was big, handsome, strong, big, thick, hard, big, vigorous, young, big, taking me to two orgasms of my own before gushing big and deep inside me. What I had remembered; what I had been pining for.

He recovered quickly, and after I sucked him to engorged again as he lay on his back on the bed and I hovered over him, I straddled his pelvis, impaled myself, and rode him to paradise—at least to paradise for me. I took his groaning and moaning to mean he was having a good time too.

Laying there, entwined, spent at least for now—but with his relative youth and virility I knew there would be more—we spoke for the first time.

"I was told you weren't here anymore. I admit I was crushed. This room is just for us—for the week."

"The beach stand is a concession. I manage it. My mother got me the job through one of her male friends."

Ah, his mother. That just a little bit of doubt with Billy. He's still tied to his mother. And he's so openly, unabashedly sexy. A worry for later, but implanted there because of what I knew was possible by knowing the continued relationship between William and his sister. I kept avoiding coming to grips with this incest thing. They were both adults. Was it the element of incest—and mature incest now—that slashed at me as much as it was that William had another woman—and had been with her before he was with me? How did I feel about extramarital affairs? Was I more put off by that than about the incest? I'd had a few affairs myself. I was having one now—or I hoped I was going to have another go at one now. The others were revenge fucks. This, though, this was something more, based on so much more.

Why in hell was I thinking of this now, with this large, thick cock of a younger man pressing at my belly, soon to move lower again, and then up, gloriously inside me again?

"But I'm not here that much longer."

"Oh?" I asked, feeling myself coming down from the clouds just a bit. What he said sounding ominous.

"I'm taking off in a couple of weeks for Los Angeles. Ralph has the concession for the beach equipment at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel on Santa Monica beach. I'm moving up there to manage that for him. My mother's in Los Angeles now and got me the job."

Shit. Moving with Momma again. Stop thinking about that, Mary Ellen. He's here now. Has been churning inside me. Wants me. Satisfies me. Will be inside me again in a few minutes—I felt him engorging already as his hands glided over my body, squeezed my breasts, thumbed my nipples, fingers inside my vagina. But wait. Did he say he's moving to L.A., where I live?

"You live in Los Angeles, don't you? It means we can be together more often."

Hallelujah. Yes, that's all the matters. The other can be worked—schemed, if necessary—away. Or I can just live with it, as I've lived with the shadow of Kathy for four years.

"Yes, I'd like that. No, I'd love that?" I wondered how long he'd still want me, with all the opportunity he had. I was thirty-five now. Of course his mother must be in her mid forties at least. Stop that, Mary Ellen. It's not important—at least not as important as other possibilities are.

"You say you've checked in for a week, but there isn't much of anything of you in this room."

"I've brought my sons. Gideon is over three now, and Joshua is over one. I think you'd like them—very much. They are strawberry blonds, like you. Sunny dispositions, like you. Boisterous, though. I have two rooms on another floor, and I have a nanny to watch over them. We can be together here as much as you can get away."

I did want to mention the boys, but I was scared to dwell on them. I had no idea how Billy thought about children. And I noted that he hadn't asked about William. He didn't seem to care in the least about my marital status. That was both good and bad. For now, though, it was great. All he seemed to care about now was to get that luscious cock of his inside me again. That was great.

"Which will be as much as I can—being with you this week. This will be Mary Ellen week. You'll grow sick of my lovemaking."

"Never," I whispered. Tears formed in my eyes.

"Oh, sugar, I do so love doing you. I'll show you how much Baby wants Momma."

Not that he loved me, but, rather, that he loved fucking me.

That, and the references to "baby" and "Momma," grated on me only for a moment, as he was working his lips and tongue and teeth down from my breasts, across my belly, into my trimmed bush, and then into my folds, searching for and finding and sucking on my clit, opening me up with his fingers, sucking on me as I writhed under him until I exploded, and then rising over me, entering me strongly, and pumping, pumping, pumping.

I was exhausted when I finally rejoined Gretchen and the boys in the rooms on the second floor, but not as exhausted as when I returned to the rooms later in the evening, after supper with the boys at the beachfront café and another romp in the hay in Room 428 with Billy.

But I wasn't too exhausted to lay stretched out on the bed in one room, with Gretchen, after the boys, worn out from their fun day, soundly asleep in the other room, and to let Gretchen methodically, comprehensively, Germanically work her lips, tongue, and teeth down my torso and into my V, just as Billy had done earlier, and show that a radically different technique could bring me to an orgasm almost the equal of the several Billy gave me.

Not ready to sexually join the twenty-first century, as William had charged? I snorted.

Valentine's Day, 2006

It had been William's bad decision from the beginning—to have Jacob, now three months old, christened as a broader family affair. It seemed in his best interests to project to the world that we were still a family unit—as reflected in the recent addition to the family. And I went along with it because it was in my interest not to rock the boat financially with William for as long as possible. Although my plans were forming to bring that to a head.

Billy and I had met frequently over the year since we'd last been together for that Valentine's Day week in 2005. He had moved in with his mother here—and with his father, he told me, which came as a surprise to me—when he'd moved to Los Angeles. But he'd made a lot of time for me. And he'd seemed interested in the progress of my most recent pregnancy. Enough so that I could hope that I could snag him for myself someday and he wouldn't be put off by my coming with three sons. It was important to me that he could potentially be a father to my boys in the dreams I couldn't help but spinning.

I was floored—and a bit taken aback—by William's reasoning on doing this christening on Valentine's Day. I mean, it was a Tuesday. In my experience, church christenings were done on Sundays, in front of a congregation. This was Tuesday, and it was a family-only affair—although a larger family affair than I was comfortable with. William and I weren't together anymore, although the divorce hadn't gone through yet. He and Kathy would be sitting on the other side of the church from Gretchen and me—and the boys, including infant Jacob. And no congregation. Apparently William had as much pull in this church as he had everywhere else in Los Angeles. Which is why I was cooperating with him.

William had given me his explanation for why the christening would be on Valentine's Day. "Count back, Mary Ellen. For each of the boys. Each one was born in November. Each one was conceived around Valentine's Day. That has a special meaning for you and me, isn't it? Valentine's Day is a day we both can cherish forever—even if just between ourselves."

So, I understood why it wasn't going to be much of a church thing. A congregation would likely squirm in their seats at such an explanation, as romantic as William was trying to be about it. I also clearly knew I'd just shake my head and go with William's flow on that. I didn't want that discussed too much, no indeedy.

I must admit that I probably was amenable to William's wishes about this at least partially because I knew he was having a rough time with Kathy and I didn't want to bring the tension from that to the surface any more than necessary. There were both good and bad aspects to that. Their housekeeper (once my housekeeper) was happy to keep me informed, and she seemed delighted to tell me that living together hadn't brought William and Kathy two closer together. The two apparently argued constantly. And for all his views on being happy juggling both Kathy and me, William was a neat man and health conscious. Kathy was sloppy, a boozer, and a smoking chimney. I suppose being brought together to live in the same house inevitably brought the odd couple aspect out of them.

The other issue, something I didn't wish on anyone, even Kathy, was that the housekeeper said she thought Kathy was sick. She was going to the doctor a lot. The problem pointed to cancer. Probably lung cancer, the housekeeper said, noting Kathy's chain-smoking habit. I couldn't gloat over that, but I could entertain fears of what William might want from me if and when Kathy disappeared from the scene. The answer for me now was to remain as cordial with and remote from him as possible.

It all went to hell as soon as I entered the church—Gretchen and the boys had gone on ahead of me while I had visited the ladies' room to take three big breaths. When I came into the church sanctuary, I saw the three strawberry-blond heads together over at the edge of the front pew and crouched over a couple of toy trucks they were zooming on the wine-colored carpet.

Three strawberry-blond heads. My sons, Gideon, four, and Joshua, two, and—of course, I should have known—Billy, nearly twenty-six. The three of them were deeply engrossed in enjoying each other's company. Even as I was sickened by everything I was avoiding figuring out up to now, I was jubilant at seeing Billy enjoying getting down on the floor and playing with Gideon and Joshua like he was just one more kid.

Of course. I should have seen it before. Billy was Kathy's son. All of her moves had coordinated with the moves Billy had made. And beyond that, he was William's son too. God, he even had William's name. William. Bill. Kathy had named her son after the brother who had fathered him. There was a reason why I had always thought of them as essentially the same type and coloring, just twenty years apart. They were father and son. Which meant Kathy had borne William at least one child even before I'd met William. And it made Kathy's and Billy's sexual relationship so much more probable too—proving out the suspicions and doubts I'd had all along. Billy's interest in older women went back to his relationship with his mother.

This was a family that lifted its middle finger to the concept of incest.

Did I care? No, not really, at this point, as long as I had hope of weaning Billy away from William and Kathy—and to me. The convoluted relations were leavened by the way Billy was responding there on the floor to Gideon and Joshua. He even was so interesting to the boys that they weren't swinging from the chandeliers high overhead in the sanctuary yet. They even were responding to him when he shushed them—for the few seconds they could remember to.

I steeled myself, glad that I'd been so fast on the uptake—eventually.

William came up to me. "I don't think you've met Kathy's son yet. Bill, let me introduce you to the mother of the baby."

Kathy's son. There he'd said it. Neither of them had mentioned that Kathy had a son before—or that there had been a husband in the picture at any time before other than William. Billy had mentioned enough about men friends of his mother that I'd gotten the impression that his mother was promiscuous and he was born out of wedlock. It hadn't meant anything to me—so I'd never pursued the point.

"Kathy's son," I answered dully, not caring if I also was conveying that I knew Billy was his son too. Let him pretend that away for a bit longer, if he wished. But along with the shock of the discovery, new possibilities of sticking it to William—of revenge that need not be public but that could turn the knife in his back—were starting to emerge.

Billy looked up and did the double take I assumed he would when he recognized me. But he recovered quickly. All he said was, "Mary Ellen? Oh, I already know Mary Ellen."

The beaming smile Billy gave me assured me that nothing would change between us as far as he was concerned. A young man fucking his mother was not likely to be put off screwing me just because I was his sort of step-mother. And Billy's direct, open, and immediate "I already know her" declaration, I could see, with satisfaction, set his father back on his heels. William started to say something. But just then the minister appeared in front of the altar table, and the show was beginning. Gretchen handed me Jacob, and I and William stepped up two steps to stand in front of the minister.

I thought of Gretchen briefly. She would be fine with this. She was as open, honest, and straightforward about sex as Billy was. There'd be no complications there. She'd go with the flow. I'd even told her where I'd spent so much time last Valentine's Day week. My thoughts could go back to William and him realizing Billy and I already knew each other. Billy had been living with him long enough for William to understand about Billy and older women—even about Billy and his mother, I could hazard a guess.

Good, I thought, let William twist in the wind on that for a while. And then, when he was at his most vulnerable, then—then—I'd hit him with the three little factoids that none of the boys—not Gideon or Joshua or even Jacob—were his biological sons. There were many doubts surrounding everything in my life, including my sons. But I had no doubt who had fathered them, who I had conceived them with, what man's sperm had quickened me with each of my boys. They were Billy's. William wasn't their father. Through his own twisted decisions in life, they were his grandsons.

So, now it began, I thought. I'd pull Billy aside after the ceremony and talk to him in the straightforward, honest terms he specialized in himself. I don't know what I'd say to him at this point. I just knew it was the definite start down the path to get him from William and Kathy's home and clutches into mine—with his sons, our sons—and giving me the attention I think I so richly deserved for what I had to put up with in this fucked-up family of his.